Finding Miracles Read Online Free PDF Page A

fright and stand there, my mouth hanging open, my hands itching like crazy. “This one just is not a ham, is she?” Grandma would laugh, shaking her head at me.
    Anyhow, Happy’s father was this genius who invented everything from burner bibs (it really isn’t worth knowing what those things are) to two-ply toilet paper and, of course, Happy Wrap, named after Happy. (“Seal in the Freshness, Bring out the Smiles.”)
    Happy’s mom was the real sad story. She had come to America from Germany way back in the 1930s as a nanny, but the rest of her family stayed and later perished in the Holocaust. Happy’s mom never ever talked about it. Instead, she drank too much, and as it turns out, took lots of pills that didn’t agree with the drinking. She died of an overdose soon after Happy came out—as a debutante. I guess with grandparents you don’t really have to say that.
    Happy married Grandpa Bob, who legally changed his last name to hers. If I didn’t know Happy, I’d say one big step for feminism. She had Dad, then Aunt Joan, then got divorced. Grandpa Bob died when I was four. Happy remarried three times but never had any more kids. She was like a Queen Bee, discarding husbands. Right now there was no one—that we knew of anyhow. But they crept up on you, Happy’s marriages and divorces. As a matter of fact, we wondered if the news she wanted to discuss was a fifth husband?
    The night before Happy was to arrive, there was a knock at my door. “Just us,” Mom and Dad chimed when I asked, “Yes?”
    Oh no, I thought. When your parents are at your door together, you know it’s more than a friendly visit. I put my hands under my covers so I could scratch them out of sight.
    Mom and Dad sat on either side of my bed. It reminded me of the day way back when I was a little kid and they had told me.
    “Milly, your mom and I, well, we’ve noticed . . . ,” Dad began. Suddenly, he looked helpless and flashed Mom a conversational SOS.
    “We’ve noticed a change,” Mom picked up. “Is something bothering you? At school? This new boy—”
    “You guys!” I said, exasperated.
    “You’ve always chosen to be very private about this,” Mom continued quietly. “But it might be good to talk about it, don’t you think?”
    “Children come to families in different ways.” Dad always quoted Mom when he didn’t know what to say during a heart-to-heart. Somehow it didn’t annoy me as much when Dad said things as when Mom did. “We couldn’t love you any more if you were...” Dad’s voice got all gravelly.
    For a minute my own sadness fell away. “Are you okay, Dad?”
    Mom reached over and squeezed Dad’s hand. When he didn’t say anything, Mom explained that Happy’s visit was stirring up stuff for all of us. “Dad’s probably just feeling a little sad about his own mother. Happy’s never made it easy for him.”
    I knew the whole story. I mean, I had lived a lot of that story. Happy being furious with Dad for leaving the family business and going off to the Peace Corps. Then even more furious when Dad came back three years later with a non-Jewish wife, a baby daughter, and a sickly, foreign orphan girl. His stock went up briefly when he rejoined Kaufman Quality Products, then plummeted again when he quit and we moved away from Long Island to a state where you couldn’t buy a decent bagel. Periodically, Happy would try to pressure Dad to come back to Kaufman, and when he refused, she’d issue some threat. In fact, one of Mom’s theories about the birthday weekend was that Grandma was coming up to deliver her latest ultimatum. Recently, she’d approached Dad again about joining the family business, and Dad had again refused. “Get ready for the next disowning!” Mom had joked, out of Nate’s hearing that time.
    “Grandma doesn’t really mean it, Dad,” I tried consoling him now. No matter how pissed Grandma would get, she always took us back. And she never stopped sending checks in the mail, which